upon every Roman matron to visit the temple. And each
worshipper must walk the entire distance from her home to
the temple and must leave her house barefoot, barefoot she
must walk from the temple to her home. Only illness excused
a Roman woman from this religious duty. Few ever omitted
it from indifference.

During these eight days the temple was thronged.

During these eight days also fell the great yearly festival of
Vesta, on the ninth of June, on which day also all millers kept
holiday, with processions and picnics to which the mill-donkeys
were led decorated with wreaths of flowers and strings of tiny,
crisp-baked rolls.

On June fifteenth the temple was ceremonially cleaned and the
sweepings and the ashes collected from the sacred fire for the
year past were solemnly carried in a stately procession to a
prescribed spot on the slope of the Capitol where a great pit
was closed by a heavy maple-wood door. In this pit the ashes
were reverently buried.

Besides these observances of their special cult the Vestals took
part in nearly every important sacrifice, procession and festival
of the public worship of Rome. They were busy women and
among them Brinnaria was anything but idle. She never found
time hang heavy on her hands.

So busied with her duties she passed three peaceful years,
contented and happy. There was but one drawback to life in